Moneyball 2011 - the Movie

I am a little susprised that the film "Moneyball" received prededominently good reviews.  While I enjoyed the movie, I thought at moments it dragged a bit and I would think that a person that is not a baseball fan would find the film somewhat long.  Slow pacing is a pet peeve of mine - like when I am watching the Cardinals continually rotate in pitchers with a 5 run lead, I suppose that may happen less in the future...

 

Other than that I found Moneyball to be an enjoyable experience.  Brad Pitt played Billy Beane as a thoughtful and challenging leader.  Comedy stalwart, Jonah Hill, plays a straight roll as the stats guy well - The always enjoyable Phillip Seymour Hoffman has an excellent turn as the old school Manager Art Howe,   Bennet Miller is able to balance a little baseball into the story and conveys a bunch of ideas on film that might otherwise be dry - One Base Percentage, Major League Scouting, Bill James, Giving away outs via Sacrifices and small ball, Working Pitchers, etc.  There is a background story regarding the Beane family that is built into the narrative that I don't recall from the book.  The film also all but neglects Jeremy Brown and the draft that the book details which covers at least 2 chapters of the Michael Lewis story. 

 

We all know what happened because this is relatively recent history - but I must mention a minor spoiler alert here - don't read rest of paragraph if you fear this will ruin your experience.  During the epilogue of the Movie it is mentioned that the Bosox won the 04 World Series using Moneyball methods.  It does not mention that they also outspent the rest of the league other than the Yankees.  And I could go on further and mention that a key play for the Red Sox was Dave Roberts critical Steal of second base in the ALCS vs the Yankees. 

 

Moneyball works for a few reasons - Both Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill give likable performances in the lead roles of two guys trying to challenge the status-quo.  There is enough baseball in the film to provide a fan with a few chuckles - several players and people with Phillies connections are mentioned during the film.  Finally as a non-baseball movie about baseball "Moneyball" does successfully bring the romance of the game to the fore (even if they have to tell you they are doing so)

 

Moneyball 2011

 

Links to  previous MB 2011 posts

Bennett Miller

Billy Beane

Jeremy Brown

Michael Lewis

Michael Oher 

Tony LaRussa

 

etc

Here is a link to a Moneyball and Collecting related article in Beckett that I first saw referenced by Chris Olds via Twitter. 

Moneyball 2011 - Bennett Miller

Moneyball was directed by Bennett Miller, who has very few film credits listed in IMDB.  My quick -net searches have revealed the Miller is a casual baseball fan at best, but it appears that he is interested in making biographies. 

This card may not seem closely connected - but stay with me here...

 

 

The Clutter family card above is low level on my wish list for 08 Heritage Inserts.  I swiped this image from the dormant Bargain Baseball Cards.  It is typically pretty hard to tell when a blogger stops.  Most folks don't really announce it, it just sort of happens.  Regardless the evidence that their blog existed sticks around for a while perhaps forever. 

The demise of the Clutter family was documented in Truman Capote's book "In Cold Blood"  I believe ICB is considered one of the earliest works of the non-fiction novel  - A style in which the author wasn't at the events but reconstructs them as if he or she were.  This is a technique that would later be used frequently by 60/70s pop culure author Tom Wolfe is such books as "The Electic Kool-Aid Acid Test" which chronicled the acid-fueled adventures of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" author Ken Kesey. 

One my ask what this trading card has to do with Baseball or Moneyball...  

Well, As a director Bennett Miller has only a couple of films under his belt, his previous big budget film was 2005s "Capote" about Truman Capote.  Miller was one of the years nominees for Best Director, an award that went to Ang Lee for "Brokeback Mountain".  The titular character in "Capote" was played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman who plays A's manager Art Howe in Moneyball.

I suppose I can mention that it is quite fitting that a posting about a man who directed a non-Baseball movie about baseball and is admittiedly not a big fan of the sport - contains very little about baseball

Moneyball 2011

 

Links to  previous MB 2011 posts

 

Billy Beane

Jeremy Brown

Michael Lewis

Michael Oher 

 

etc

Here is a link to a Moneyball and Collecting related article in Beckett that I first saw referenced by Chris Olds via Twitter.